Nightmare
by Mei Corby
Summary: A glimpse of the true ruler of the Dark Future.  Contains spoilers for Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky .


Night lay uneasily over the place that had once been called the Hidden Land. Or was it night? The sky was dark, it was true, but it was always dark now. In a land where sunrise never came, there was little need for distinction between night and day. The darkness was eternal.

A dark form skimmed easily just beneath the first tier of clouds, gazing down at the dark, silent land below. Only small patches of white and red differentiated it from the gloomy background of the unchanging sky. Without a sound, it descended from the heavens to hover just a few inches above the cracked and broken stones of Temporal Tower.

The tower that had once risen tall and proud from the horizon of the Hidden Land was all but destroyed, little more than a loose column of tenuously connected rocks. Smashed stones spread out in a motionless wave from its base, and huge chunks of masonry hung suspended in space like a gargantuan pendant stretching down from the tower's apex. Frozen where they had begun to fall, on the day that the tower had finally collapsed.

On the day that time had stopped.

Ice-blue eyes glinted with ghastly amusement, and a spidery black hand reached out to grasp a chunk of rock. The fingers closed about it tightly, until the rock itself shook and groaned with the stress. Nothing to protect it, now. Not like when the shadow had begun, such a long time ago. Then every stone had resisted prying fingers, had flamed back with numbing power. So long, it had been, chipping away stone by stone at the hated tower, widening the cracks until finally the tower had begun to fail-

Bits of rock, scarcely bigger than pebbles, pattered down onto the flagstones of the tower's summit, accompanied by a shower of dust. The shadow looked down at its now-empty hand, surprised, then shrugged. It had other things to focus on than useless reminiscing.

From where the center of the tower had once been, where a dark pit now opened a gaping mouth, came the sound of ragged breathing. The shadow drifted closer.

A huge form was curled in the depths of the pit, amid a pathetic nest of rubble. Broken stone was scattered about the circular cavity as if it had been flung by a mighty rage. It probably had, the shadow thought drily. With a casual motion, it sailed over the wreckage and drifted down into the pit.

Dialga, once the master of Temporal Tower, lay amid the shattered ruins of its kingdom, seeming even in sleep to quiver with distress. To a being so linked to time, the planet-wide paralysis must be nearly intolerable. It would probably go completely mad soon, the shadow observed, not in the least displeased.

One three-fingered dark hand reached out, and with a surprising tenderness brushed against the huge entity's head. For a moment the two slivers of icy blue vanished as the visitor closed its eyes in intense concentration. When they opened again, a moment or two later, the midnight-hued hand withdrew. Dialga twitched in its sleep, steel claws lashing out at an unseen foe. A feral growl rumbled from its sleeping jaws.

The shadow smiled with cold amusement.

Lifting lightly out of the pit, it soared into the ever-dark sky, leaving behind a Dialga trapped within the talons of a nightmare. As the master of Temporal Tower growled and groaned, struggling to wake, the shadow skimmed away from Temporal Tower like a black comet.

As it passed over the stockade, bits of dreams reached out to it, as they always did. Most were unpalatable—though filled, as always, with the omnipresent darkness—but a few were delicious, beautiful nightmares. It always felt those the most strongly. And there was one… The shadow paused in its flight and hovered, taken aback. A bright, hopeful dream, tinged with the promise of a sunrise.

The blue eyes narrowed. What cause would a Pokémon have to _hope_? Who would have the audacity to dream of a sunrise, of all wretched things, it a world where the sun never rose? After a moment, it shrugged the incident off; it could always deal with the dreamer later. Closing its mind off from the dreams, the shadow soared away.

As it left the Hidden Land, the dark figure swooped down from the sky, flying so close to the ocean that its fingers brushed through the frozen spray. As the long continental coastline appeared in the distance, the shadow allowed itself a mirthless laugh.

Dialga and Dusknoir could call themselves the rulers of the Hidden Land for millennia, for all it cared. After all, what consequence was a little island in the ocean when there was a whole world in which to spread nightmares?


End file.
